Tomato and Eggplant on Concrete

Tomato

Eggplant

Four plots done. Four to go :)

Sniper the Dog

Shih Tzu / Mini Pinscher / Mongrel Mix

This is Sniper, our farm dog.

Conditioning our Piglets

Since our first batch of pastured pigs was successful, we opted to get our second batch of pigs from EJB farms. Being on concrete floor during the first two months, their natural instinct showed up (like snout digging) when we transferred them to their new beddings. Then from commercial feeds, we slowly transitioned them to our own mixture of fermented feeds. After a month of conditioning, we will pasture them to their ranging area.

PNFI Natural Farming Seminar

PNFI Farming seminar in Department of Agriculture Quezon City

The true blue farmer himself, Mr. Dante S. Delima

Ms. Teresa G. Perez - Saniano of Earthkeepers

This is included in the seminar.  A complete guide in Natural Farming. All contents are in tagalog :)

Signed by the authors themselves

Some photos from PNFI Facebook Page

Our Feed Garden

January 2011

March 2011

August 2011

Indigofera

Flamengia

Rensonii and Indigofera

It was in the summer months of Febuary 2011 when we planted from seeds these food for the animals on an estimated total area of 500sqm. This is just enough for our first batch of pig which is 16 heads. Now, we extended the area to about 1000sqm. It's a perfect time to plant fodder trees :) Plentiful supply of rain water:)

Concrete Raised Beds

It was trial and error in building this plot. We had to choose the right size of rubble to be stacked in order for the structure to be stable. So far, no problems were encountered in this area. It even got hit by 2 typhoons already. The area has a slanted plane which enables proper drainage so there are no issues in terms of flooding (Remember that this was a gestating house for the pigs before so water drainage was designed already).  

Each plot measures 1 meter x 20 meters with plastic mulch.  This area will be housing a total of 8 plots. Marigold will be planted in the surrounding area.

Crusor Day 1 Vid002

Welcome to the world, Piglets!

Babies! Didn't know that Pot Belly piglets were that small. It looked like a big rat! 
This was our first time delivering piglets in a natural way and luckily, we did not encounter any problems like piglets suddenly dying or crushing issues (Mother pig accidentally crushes her baby pig). 

Sows (Mother Pig) are very protective with their young. They usually growl and sometimes charge us whenever we get close to their offspring. Despite this behavior, we are happy with the outcome because coming from a conventional farm, we rarely see such freedom from the mother pigs to act in their natural behavior. Note that in a conventional piggery farm, the mother pig is placed in a farrowing crate and her movements are very limited.  

 One of our top priorities in Crusor is the welfare of the animals. As much as possible, we want to mimic the animals' natural habitat and give them less stress.

Expanding the Herb Area

Lemon Grass, Thai Basil, and Lagundi. We started with just two cuttings of Lemon grass, thirty from-seed Thai Basil and three cuttings of Lagundi. You can see from this post that this plot of land used to be bare. Now the plants have grown bigger :)

The making of the new plots for the herbs.The pigs did their job by tilling the soil for us. Pigs are in the habit of unearthing anything from the soil as part of their natural behavior. In the process, they actually till the soil and at the same time make the soil rich in organic matter. We just added a little compost and CRH (carbonized rice hull) then sprayed the soil with beneficial microorganisms.  After a week, we planted cuttings of Thai Basil and Lemon grass. 

We continuously spray beneficial microorganisms such as EM, FPJ (Fermented Plant Juice), OHN (Organic Herb Nutrients), FAA (Fish Amino Acid), and Calcium from bones and egg shells to keep the soil healthy and thus, completing the plants' nutrient requirement as well :)

 

Free Ranged / Pastured Pigs

Happy pigs doing their natural ways. Four months into ranging and neither a single mortality nor sickness hit them. One thing I noticed is that they don't squeal for food - which means they are comfortable with their environment and they are fed well. Being able to range allows them to feed on natural foods such as grass cuttings and insects.

A pregnant pig lounging around

The boar and the sow pot belly. She's also pregnant.

The white pigs from EJB farms. Look at their nice body structure. This is primarily because of they eat natural foods and they exercise (running). These white pigs are such runners - they can even outrun the native pigs.

Special thanks to EJB Farms (Pandi,Bulacan) for giving us Class A piglets. EJB Farms offer pigs with superior genetic lines as well. They also sell commercial pigs at a reasonable price:)

Free range / Pastured Pigs Vid001

Our first set of vegetable crops

Here are some pictures of Crusor's first crops which were mostly fed to the pigs as their snacks. We prepared home-made concoctions for the plant nutrients such as Effective Microorganisms (EM), Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ), Organic Herb Nutrients (OHN), and the likes. We didn't use any chemical fertilizers and insecticides for the plants. This was our first time growing vegetables so we encountered errors and challenges in the process. Yes, our first grow didn't quite turn out perfect but we eventually learned from it. I'll post results from our second grow in the succeeding entries :)

Pole Sitao trellising on Mahogany trees

We planted Gotukula and Lemon Grass in the herb area. There's not much to see here, yet.:)

The future fodder for the livestock. Rensonii, Flemengia, Indigofera, Malunggay, and Cassava were planted at an estimated area of 700sqm. The intense heat during last summer made it hard for the newly transplanted plants to retain water. We made sure that we water them everyday to keep the moisture of the ground constant during those summer months. We used rice hulls with processed chicken manure as mulch. It retained moisture and made weeding very minimal.

 

Kangkong bed. Notice that in between the beds is a very small walkway. Well, we changed it now. The stacking of the rubble was not that uniform (unlike with our most recent raised bed)... we're still learning :)

This was our first design for the trellising vegetables like Ampalaya and Bottle Gourd. The sack didn't last long - it became brittle. We also used bamboo poles overhead for the crawling vines. We eventually abolished this design because it didn't work.

Okra growing in sacks. The sacks were good for the first fruiting of the plants. It then got brittle and soil was coming out.

Radish harvesting was amusing. Since it's our first time to grow a root vegetable, we were unsure of the exact harvest time for the radish so we kept on estimating the harvest date. They were grown in 14 inches of raised bed on concrete. Each row of bed was 1x3 meters in size with limited harvesting area. We modified it to 1x20 meters now and allocated a meter of walkway as harvesting area.  The pigs in the farm love the radish - they even play with it before munching on it.

We had no problems growing this Pechay. The substrate is rich in nutrients. We used compost and CRH (carbonized rice hull) and sprayed/innoculated it with beneficial microorganisms.  We gave half of the harvest to the pigs as their meriendas.